Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Theo let out a harsh laugh and then went silent for a few moments before continuing.
“There was no TV, but they had a library. All appropriate Bible-related books, of course. I think I read every single book in there at least half a dozen times.”
“How many books were there?” I asked.
“Three hundred and twenty-seven,” Theo responded without hesitation. “I spent the first year marking up the books so I could show Father Abbott the hypocrisies I’d found. I’d actually thought he’d be interested in discussing them. A lot of them didn’t even have anything to do with sexuality. I just wanted answers. I guess I liked proving that none of it was as simple as black and white.”
“He wasn’t interested in discussions, was he?”
“Yeah, he was interested in them. He was interested in making me erase every note I’d made wherever I’d been smart enough to use pencil. For the books I’d marked up with pens, I had to do extra work to pay to replace them. Mostly cleaning. I also only got half the amount of food that everyone else got. It was just grunt work. Sometimes I didn’t even mind it because it broke up the day more.”
Theo stopped exploring my arm and twined his fingers with mine.
“They asked us every day if we’d been saved by God and absolved of the sin of homosexuality. Since no one had proven to me that being gay was actually a sin, my answer was always the same. Back then I believed the true sin would have been to stand up and lie. Since my parents wouldn’t even come visit me because I was still sinning, I had no place to go anyway. One year passed, then two. By then the truth was all I had. It was the one thing they couldn’t take from me.”
I closed my eyes as I remembered Theo’s statement about having everything taken from him.
“I figured that once I turned eighteen, they couldn’t legally keep me there. That was another truth Father Abbott chose to ignore. I think I’d become like some personal mission for him. He had to break me.
“When I realized they weren’t going to let me leave after I turned eighteen, I tried to escape. I never made it past the guards during the first attempt, but I almost made it to the highway a few miles away on the second one. That was when I was moved to The Tower.”
“The Tower?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’d only heard rumors about it, so I didn’t really think it was real, but one morning the guards came into my room, tied my hands and feet with zip ties and put a hood over my head. They threw me into some kind of truck or van and we drove uphill for close to an hour, I think. They dumped me onto this cold tile floor. Someone started hitting me with some kind of whip or something. Whatever it was, it cut into my flesh. I pulled myself into the fetal position and screamed and begged them to stop. I must have passed out at some point because when I woke up, I was still tied up, but the hood was gone. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands. I could feel the blood running down my back. I tried moving around to figure out where I was, but the movement hurt my back so bad that I threw up. I’d always been scared at The Ranch but there’d been this sense of built-in safety of sorts. We’d been mistreated there but the abuse never got physical, you know?”
I knew he wasn’t expecting an answer, yet I couldn’t help but tighten my arm around him. I had to remind myself not to pull him any closer to me.
“I don’t know how much time passed before someone came and cut the zip ties off. They left me with a tiny cup of water and a piece of bread and then they shut the door again. There were no windows, no lights, no bed, no toilet. It wasn’t more than the size of a closet. They’d leave me in there for days at a time,” Theo said, but for the first time, I heard his voice crack.
“I had to sit in my own filth,” he continued before a harsh sob escaped his throat.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I reminded him as I pulled him flush against me. I was no longer worried about scaring him with my erection because my dick had gone soft as I’d pictured all the atrocities heaped upon the young man in my arms.
“I, um, I don’t want to go into all the details,” Theo choked out. I could feel his tears falling on my arm.
I took a risk and turned him so he was facing me and then tucked him against my body. He was shaking violently, and his body was ice cold.